I've had a hankering for a valved radio for a while now, I've been keeping my eye on various radios Kenwood hybrids, Yaesu rigs, KW-2000B etc, anyway this old radio presented itself at a good price physically it was in good condition, it was sold as spare/repair for 105 usd I thought why not?
On arrival I swapped out the HV caps before attempting to power it up, the item was as described no RX no TX, no glow from the valves, the 25/100kc marker was not creating a signal either.
Following on from the HV capacitors I changed all the electrolyte capacitors in the distribution board, this took the tube heaters back up, PROGRESS!
Next step was to get RX, this is where it got confusing for a moment, the radio is a early FT-101 pre 25k serial, but many of the boards were transplanted sometime ago to later boards, anyway to cut a long story short, I continued the theme of changing el. caps this time in the audio board, this took the radio back to life, both RX and TX are now going! so much for a winter project!
So I'm rather pleased, finally a real radio on my desk here in Denver, I have a TS-480HX which is a great rig, but the 101 feels right, I had a 101Z and a 101B years ago the Z gave good service, the B was part of a trade.
Anyway I'll just need to realign the radio, and install WARC bands into it, the plan is to use the 11 meter position for 12 meters, the WVV xtal will be jumpered to 20/40 band selector for TX on 30 meters and the AUX band switch will be filled with a 17 meter xtal jumpered to the 15 meter tuning gear
